


Carry Me Home

by signalbeam



Category: Persona 4
Genre: AU, Angry Sex, Angst, Assumed Identity, Bitterness, Blind Date, Branching Paths, Community: badbadbathhouse, F/F, Post-Canon, Unexpected Reunions, Variations on a theme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-05
Updated: 2009-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-18 11:37:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signalbeam/pseuds/signalbeam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: Yukiko runs away from Inaba after catching the murderer. Eight years later, Chie meets a familiar woman in the city. Three variations on a departure and a return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. carry me home

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the badbadbathhouse prompt: _Anon would like to see a post-game Yukiko/Chie fic in which Yukiko's S-Link never reached its turning-point and she never dared elaborate on her feelings for Chie. Yukiko has quietly left Inaba in pursuit of herself, leaving Chie behind._
> 
> Structure ripped shamelessly off of Carol Anshaw's novel, _Aquamarine_ while most chapter and heading titles were shamefully borrowed from Hem songs, thus proving that I don't have an original bone in my body.

When Chie was in the academy, she fantasized about using the skills she learned to find Yukiko. Go out into the city, maybe, and trace her credit cards, the way people did it in the movies. She hounded Dojima so often that he eventually pulled her aside and told her to stop being stupid, and that Yukiko couldn’t have gone far, anyway. How far could a teenage girl with no money, no job, and no future without the Inn go, anyway?

She went _far_. Or if at least not far, then she went in deep, deeper than Inaba could trace her, deeper than the police could find her. Chie laid in bed for hours sometimes, wondering what Yukiko did to throw off her trail. Cash, definitely. A new name, a new haircut, a new face, and a new wardrobe, but she can't picture Yukiko in anything other than red. Maybe Yukiko's working somewhere. Maybe she's in college, expanding her worldview and bursting out of the cage.

Sometimes she dreams of hiring a private detective to go look for her. Naoto looked for Yukiko three months after she left, and came back two weeks later looking dazed and bewildered.

They arrested me, she said.

Who did?

The police. Whenever I tried to get near the place where she’s staying, they arrested me. She’s put a restraining order on me. A little lull, a dip in the conversation. Then she says, on all of us. She doesn’t want to see us.

But, Chie says, that doesn’t make sense. It’s impossible. Yukiko, who’s taken hits for them (her), who’s breathed fire for them (her), who’s healed broken bones and reattached severed limbs, doesn’t want to see anyone. Any of them—especially _her_. She’s lived an entire friendship being an exception, and now she's one of a group of people Yukiko doesn’t want to see. She had always been glad to mean something that no one else can ever be to Yukiko, but just because Chie was special to Yukiko doesn’t mean that Chie was ever _needed_. It doesn’t mean that she was ever wanted, or dreamed of on long, empty nights, when the cicadas chirp loudly into the heat, and grass smells sweet in the breeze.

There were no letters or notes or phone calls or texts. Chie’s learned by now that when someone does this, it means they’re shutting her out. Permanently. Or at least, temporarily permanently. It means they think she’s strange or wrong or bad, and it’s not fair, but it happens.

Chie doesn’t go looking for Yukiko anymore. There was a time (a long time) when she’d check out the Amagi Inn whenever a woman with black hair and a penchant for red stopped by, but that time’s long gone. She’s moved on to other people, and avoids people with black hair and flashy red clothing. What, she jokes at the station. Do they think it actually makes them look good?


	2. he came to meet me

chiba  
december 11, 2020

She’s in Chiba for a “continuing education” seminar, which really means that everyone drifts in and out of sleep, and just barely scrapes by on the mandatory test at the end. The city’s always puts her on guard. It’s so big and so wide, with a million people pressing in from every direction. Like air pressure, she thinks as the train turns and knocks her into another person. Maybe it’s a sign that Japan’s a little _too_ crowded, because the other person barely even pretends to notice.

She’s on her way to a blind date, courtesy of Ryuzaki, who's made it his personal mission to find her a boyfriend or a girlfriend. He's zealous about it, in the way that only the newly married can be. Why can’t everyone be as happy as they are, Ryuzaki asks nobody in particular, but Chie answers the question herself, sourly, in the confines of her brain: Maybe it’s because they can’t. Maybe it’s because they have things like _issues_ and _jobs_ and a disturbing tendency for making out with women with long black hair and trying to find a slight indent on her forehead from that one time Chie crashed into someone with her bike when she was a kid. Even so, she’s bored and in the city, and Ryuzaki promises that this lady doesn’t wear red, and isn’t really looking for anything long-term. He met the woman through his wife. College friends who dated, he said, so it’s not like she’s going to be a straight girl who will run off at the first sign of physical contact—but Chie’s twenty-five, so she’s hoping that most people are done with the experimenting phase by now, especially if they're willing to put themselves through the tortures of a blind date.

The restaurant they’re going to isn’t too expensive, but it’s French or European or something. From the information she’s gathered, the person she’s going to meet is an accountant (no, don’t run away, Ryuzaki says, she’s actually really nice) and works in the area. A short fling, Ryuzaki insists, with the kind of face that probably means he wants them to hook up, and expects them to keep in contact with one another, and keen after one another and get married in America after a long, drawn-out reunion.

Chie scoffs at this internally. It sounds ridiculous. It sounds impossible and stupid and _dumb_. She knows for a fact that blind dates are sometimes fun and most of the time awkward. She wishes that Ryuzaki insisted on coming with her to break the ice, instead of leaving her wobbling along the train stations. Her shoulder-length hair is in some complicated up-do that Ryuzaki learned to do from his wife. She's wearing heels and a green dress and an overcoat, and the overcoat's the only thing that's actually hers. Ryuzaki's wife, lovely as she is, enables Ryuzaki's matchmaking more than she should.

Chie catches a flash of something red in the corner of her eye, and she follows it. Old, dumb habit.

Old dumb habit, and nothing’s stopping her from reaching out.

The woman turns around, and it’s not at all the person she’s expecting. The train she needs to catch to her connection is leaving.

She, Chie decides, is stupid.

*

This looks _beyond_ bad: showing up to dinner half an hour late, umbrella dripping wet, and on top of that, barefoot, because the heel of her left shoe has broken clean off. There is a woman in the back wearing a blue dress, and faintly bleached hair. She sits almost self-consciously, and when she spots Chie coming into the restaurant, she smiles.

There's a long instant where Chie can feel her heart arresting, and an even longer instance where Chie drops everything she's holding. She quickly makes a dive for the umbrella and her shoes and her overcoat and bag, trying to not hyperventilate as her mind spins about in overdrive.

Here is what should have happened:

Chie goes up to the table and strangles the life out of Yukiko.

Here is what actually happens:

She hobbles to the table, apologizes for looking like a wet rat, and waits for Yukiko to speak.

*

Not much has changed.

Chie thinks that seven (eight) years should have done something to Yukiko. Dull her teenage beauty, bring on a sense of abrupt maturity, change the way she talks-something, anything, except make Yukiko even more like herself than she's ever been. There is maturity in there, all right, but also uncertainty mingled with unwavering determination. Yukiko is striving to be invisible and unnoticed, which works, because it’s a city, and doesn’t, because she carries herself like she expects people to be watching her. They _are_ watching her. Who wouldn’t? The years honed her beauty, made her more aware of the effect she has on other people, and unembarrassed by it. Chie has a hard time believing that Yukiko would sign up for a blind date, and she’s straining a little to believe that this person in front of her would, too, but here they are.

Her voice sounds the same: steady and cool, with hesitation buried beneath a thin skin of confidence. She introduces herself as Miyuki Amachi. She doesn’t appear to recognize Chie at all. Chie gets so caught up in how there’s too much the same that it takes her ten minutes to realize that Miyuki's only called her Satonaka-san this entire time. There is no obvious affectation. Miyuki speaks like Yukiko, with restraint and politeness, but then mixes in a subtle flirtation and focused attention that Chie doesn’t recognize at all.

Oh, Miyuki says, and covers her mouth with her hand as she smiles. More Yukiko than Miyuki. She points at a wine and says, I wouldn’t have expected to find this vintage here.

Chie knows nothing about wine except that she’s already intoxicated with something that hovers between resentment and yearning. She says, Let’s order it, because she’s afraid of looking silly in front of this new half-stranger.

Miyuki reads the menu like it’s her mother tongue. Chie’s still trying to figure out if it’s in Spanish or Italian. When she sees Chie’s confusion, she doesn’t smile with delight or schadenfreude like Chie expects, but instead with a gentleness as she explains the dishes. Chie orders Portuguese steak. Miyuki orders some European fish that she probably first tried in college. (It turns out that it's just octopus.) They fall into easy conversation: Chie asks if Miyuki is from the city, and Miyuki answers that she’s moved around a lot because of work, but is settling down to take care of business. She went to uni in Chiba on scholarship, and works for a small, upstart robotics company.

So where were you born, Chie asks when their dishes arrive.

A small town in the north, says Miyuki, and that’s not really a lie, and not really a truth, either. You’ve probably never heard of it.

I’m from Inaba.

Really, Miyuki says. What was it like growing up there?

Not bad. Kind of boring, but the people there are wonderful. She wonders if Yukiko-underneath-Miyuki feels bad at all. She wonders how much of Miyuki is in Yukiko, how much of Miyuki is a straight-up lie.

Must have been hard, Miyuki says as she saws through the octopus with her knife, coming out to such a small town.

Chie shrugs. Says some bland ditty about how people don’t mind it, if you don’t bring it up to their faces. Miyuki leans over the table, and kisses Chie on the mouth.

We haven’t even finished dinner, Chie points out when the kiss breaks.

It’s because of the wine, says Miyuki. I want to know what you kiss like before you get too drunk.

*

Miyuki’s apartment looks too modern for Yukiko. In Chie’s mind, Yukiko sleeps in a room like a watercolor painting, set against tatami mats and sliding paper walls and a rolled up futon in the corner.

Chie has forgotten why she’s here. It was Miyuki’s suggestion, she remembers vaguely. You can stay at my place instead of going to the hotel, Miyuki said, and for some dumb reason, Chie agrees. She regrets it now: the high ceilings and stark, white walls make it even clearer of how sharply Yukiko’s tried to break away from Inaba, and the only reason why Yukiko would invite Chie, her former best friend who in fact means nothing at all to her, would be to—to—to what? Is it generosity, is it Miyuki showing off, is it an invitation?

Miyuki is talking about her hair, about how the hairdresser she goes to wanted a change and they were debating the merits of bleaching and cutting it shorter, and then Chie remembers that she’s drunk, and _that’s_ why she can’t go back to the hotel, because if there’s one thing she doesn’t need to be doing, it’s blubbering about how she met her former best friend who can’t even pretend that she recognizes Chie.

Chie doesn’t remember being in love with Yukiko, and she’s certainly not in love with Miyuki, but when Miyuki kisses her, all she can think about is how much she’s wanted to see Yukiko again, how much she wants a connection, any connection, to claim her best friend again, and to confess everything, in a single, great rush.

You need to be quieter, Miyuki tells Chie in hushed tones, and then does something with her tongue that makes Chie arch right off the bed. Chie’s panties are hanging off her ankle and her bra is in her mouth and Chie honestly can’t figure out what she’s doing or why she’s doing this or why Miyuki is doing this. Surely Miyuki knows that she’s taking her former best friend to bed and making her call for Yukiko over and over again. Chie wonders if Yukiko knows Chie’s looking for her, and if it’s difficult, being two people in the same body.

*

She wakes up on the futon half-clothed, with a woman looking down at her with concern etched on her face. It isn’t Miyuki. It isn’t Yukiko, either.

I’m sorry, the woman says. Amachi already left for work.

What?

I’m Amachi’s roommate. And then the woman says, a little awkwardly, you must be one of her girlfriends.

One of her girlfriends. Chie wonders if Miyuki brings back home a string of girlfriends with her every night and screws them stupid, or if Miyuki’s on the rebound or if Miyuki makes it a habit out of bringing girlfriends back home.

I’m not gay, says the roommate.

Nice to know, Chie says. She snaps her hair into a ponytail, and smoothes out her hair. She looks horrible, she knows, in her crumpled green dress with her bra and panties folded on the table and hair flying every which way and that.

The roommate graciously ignores all of that in favor of asking if Chie is all right. She confides in Chie that Amachi is something of a heartbreaker, has been in a bad patch for a little while.

Oh, wow, Chie says, not really knowing what she’s saying. Miyuki has a life outside of that dinner table and this apartment and—and for fuck’s sake, the lady went to college all the way in Chiba, has a job out in the city, has been expanding her world and blowing it open, and Chie's been in Inaba, looking for a person who doesn’t even exist anymore. The realization weighs bitterly on her tongue. She wants to vomit.

Amachi made you some coffee before she went to work.

I’m not thirsty.

She has a horrible headache, and she’s not sure whether it’s because of the emotional mindfuck Yukiko’s just delivered her with relish, or if it’s because of the hangover. She hails a taxi back to the hotel she’s staying at, and catches Ryuzaki in the hall.

So, he says, how was dinner?

She punches him so hard that there’s someone on top of her immediately, pulling her back while Ryuzaki spits blood onto the floor.

You knew, she says. You _knew_ you asshole—

What, Ryuzaki says. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Was she your type?

*

Chie leaves Chiba without meeting Miyuki again. On the train ride back, she’s nervous and jittery and can’t stop thinking about everything she’s leaving behind. She has nothing in this city, she knows, just the memory of a person who may or may not be her old friend. The city is shrinking back into the distance, and the rice paddies are sprouting out of the ground like a statement: this is where you are, this is who you’ll be. She’s angry: angry that she got drunk, angry that she slept with Miyuki, angry that she never got any answers. It’s only later she realizes she never got an address, never got a phone number, never got the promise of another chance. She could ask Ryuzaki for Miyuki's number, but doesn’t want to, and knows too well that she can’t.


	3. carry me home (i)

inaba  
april 21, 2021

Chie is the last person in Inaba to know Yukiko is back.

*

_i. he came to meet me (where a poison comes to settle)_

What is there to say? Yukiko is back. Chie gets roped into the party. She can’t find the words to speak. There are things she wants to say, she knows: important things, important questions.

All she can manage is a memory of falling into a bed and staring, brokenly, at someone she used to know. Chie can’t bring herself to say anything to Yukiko. She can barely look at her in the eye. People are saying how they thought she saw Yukiko returning home sometimes, on summer nights: a woman wearing blue coming into the Inn with furtive, nervous look to her, or a woman speaking with the manager. Chie never saw this person. She can see Yukiko faintly in Miyuki, but she doesn’t remember _this_ feeling of being betrayed, of being deeply and terribly wronged.

Yukiko has nothing to say to Chie, either, or at least, not things Chie wants to hear or needs to hear. She says hello, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it—

Chie leaves the party before Yukiko can even finish her sentence.

Kanji and Rise and Naoto and Yosuke and Teddie all think there’s something wrong with her. When they give Souji a call in the city, they’ll have him call her. But what is she supposed to say? There isn’t anything to it, is there? She was abandoned not only once, but twice by the person she thought was her best friend. She spent years fantasizing about what might happen if she found Yukiko, but she knows for certain that the Yukiko she knew is dead.


	4. we'll meet along the way

_ii. we’ll meet along the way (1)_

chiba  
december 11, 2020

Chie gets drunk too often in the city, which is a bad thing, because now Ryuzaki knows everything about her sordid love life, and knows all about one of her exes. She isn’t sure which one, but he hangs it over her head until she agrees to let him play matchmaker. He’s just been married, and is enthusiastic to the point of making Chie feel embarrassed for him, but she isn’t about to begrudge his happiness, and his wife is nearly as bad as he is.

Chie prays that she didn’t end up telling Ryuzaki all about Yosuke, because their four month venture into dating had ended with him throwing a toaster out the window and into the neighbor’s dog. She really hopes it isn’t Kato-kun, because she doesn’t think she can handle meeting another guy like that. Kato is the closest she’s ever gotten to dating Souji, and the entire experience had been vaguely surreal and sometimes terrible. She really hopes it wasn't Maki-chan. She's sworn off women, for the most part. It hasn't stopped her from going into bars in the city and falling into bed with a woman with long, dark hair and searching for a scar on the woman's forehead-

Besides, she was promised free steak, and she’s been eating too much hotel food and packaged lunches from their “continuing education program.” She needs real food, and if a blind date is all she has to suffer for it, then, well, she’s fine with that.

Ryuzaki’s closed-mouth about the date. All he’ll say is that he’s an accountant, he went to school in Chiba, and doesn’t have long black hair or wears red. You’ll like him, Ryuzaki says. Chie grunts, and smoothes out her dress. She still feels stupid in dresses. She’s never felt comfortable in them, never pictured herself wearing one, but here she is in a dress and heels on a train in the middle of a continuing education seminar. Ryuzaki next to her is wearing a blazer and slacks and has actually combed his hair for once, so he looks incredibly slick tonight. Chie knows people probably think they’re dating, which weirds her out even more than how Ryuzaki can navigate the world of Chiba transits and subways better than most natives.

You can’t get lost here, Ryuzaki says. Not with me here.

Chie catches a glimpse of a woman in red out of the corner of her eye, and bites down an urge to follow her. Doesn't have the right color hair, anyway.

She still tracks the woman with her eyes.

*

It’s not a man who waits for them in the restaurant, but a woman: a woman in a deep blue dress and her hair cut stylishly, and all too familiar. Chie’s spent years imagining what she might do if she met Yukiko again, but she doesn’t expect to meet her again like this, and when she walks into the restaurant her knees buckle and she’s grabbing onto Ryuzaki’s arm.

Are you all right, Miyuki Amachi asks, pushing herself up.

Excuse me, Chie says. Words bubble against her lips: _who are you why are you here you have some nerve_. Her world’s shrinking down to a little point, and then it snaps back into place. She staggers outside the restaurant, leaving Ryuzaki and Miyuki Amachi at the table, and the second she does, a torrential downpour starts and the heel of her left shoe snaps off.

She stands out there for a minute, and when she comes back in, she’s soaked to the bone with winter rain.

Oh my, says Miyuki Amachi.

I’m fine, I’m fine, Chie insists. And then she asks Ryuzaki to go to the kitchen or something and get her a towel. She punctuates her request by stepping on his toes with the shoe that’s still intact. When he leaves, Chie wipes the wet locks of hair out of her face and says, I bet you thought I wouldn’t recognize you.

Yukiko says, Chie. And then, for a single terrifying moment, she touches Chie’s arm.

Chie grabs Yukiko’s wrist, and says, You—

Am not the person you think I am, she says. Her skin is cold, always has been cold. Even now, she’s wearing a black cardigan around her shoulders. Yukiko adjusts the cardigan and says, Yukiko Amagi doesn’t exist.

You left me! You left everyone!

You’re making a scene, says Yukiko, with a frostiness that is all Miyuki. She eases her hand out of Chie’s grip, and says, Don’t cause too much trouble. I’m paying for your dinner.

No you aren’t, Chie replies. I’m leaving.

*

It takes Chie almost three hours to work her way back to the hotel, and Ryuzaki’s called her eight times since then, and texted her about fifty times. She’s too angry, too confused. She’s not gay—okay, technically she's bi, but whatever—and sure, she’s a bit hung up over Yukiko, but it’s not that kind of thing, not that kind of attraction. Ryuzaki is waiting for her at the hotel.

You left early, he says.

You know something, Ryuzaki? she says. Suck it.

Come on, Satonaka, Amachi’s a nice person. And she’s a lot like that friend you mentioned—

She _is_ that friend, you colossal dumbass!

Well, you should show some goddamn appreciation for reuniting you two, Ryuzaki says, instead of blowing us both off.

She abandoned me! She abandoned everyone! Am I supposed to go, Oh, hey, thanks for all the letters you never sent? Chie kicks the door to her hotel room so hard that it bounces off the wall and nearly hits her in the face.

Maybe they all got lost in the mail, he says, stepping into the room.

Eight years, Chie says. It’s been eight years. Not one text, not one call, not one letter! She’s wiggling out of the dress and throwing her sweats back on. No more of this stupid dating thing, she decides. Whose bright idea was it to get her in a dress, anyway? And what was with Yukiko’s _hair_?

You owe it to yourself to see her again, says Ryuzaki.

Oh, for god’s sake.

Not as a date. Just as a chance to talk. I mean, you haven’t seen her in eight years.

She is dead to me, Chie hisses, and pushes him out of the room.

*

It’s a surprise when Miyuki comes to Chie, instead. She’s wearing grays and blues: a charcoal grey skirt and matching jacket over a bright blue shirt. It looks good on her. And, for the life of her, Chie wants to push her hands under the lapels of the blazer and—god, it’s been too long since she’s been with anyone, and it’s been years since she’s ever been so aroused by a woman and she’s mad that this is happening—

What, Chie says. You couldn’ t come back home once in eight years, but you’re going to come all this way to see me?

I’ve gone home before, says Miyuki.

And you couldn’t see us? She opens the hotel door. And then Miyuki sticks her arm between the doorframe and the door before Chie can close it. Chie almost slams the door onto Miyuki’s arm, but she can’t. She’s not a cruel person, not one to go that far. And so she lets Miyuki in.

I go every year now, Miyuki says, to visit my parents.

Nice of you to visit, Chie says, so sarcastically that she’s almost frightened by the bitterness in her mouth. It’s leaking everywhere, bubbling in her lungs, filling her arms and legs with a need to strike out and hurt something or someone.

My mother had a heart attack three years ago.

No, really? I never would’ve known, she says, but it’s even more sarcastic than the first. She is the one who sat besides Yukiko’s mother, is the one who visited Yukiko’s mother in the hospital and checked up on her. She is as much of a daughter of the Amagis as she is of the Satonakas. Maybe more of a daughter. She isn’t the one who ran off. She isn’t the one who abandoned everything.

When I found out, I went back home immediately.

I’m sure you did. I didn’t see _you_ in the hospital—

I only found out from a travel magazine interview six months after it happened, says Miyuki. Then she says to Chie, you never looked for me.

Naoto did.

 _You_ never did.

This is ridiculous, talking about betrayals and family when it’s Yukiko who left everyone, Yukiko who insists she’s dead.

Of course, Miyuki says, I don’t hold it against you.

Chie grabs Miyuki and kisses her against the door. Miyuki is still taller than her, always has been, but she’s light, lighter than she’s ever been maybe, and Chie lifts Miyuki a good centimeter off the ground and holds her there.

You left _me_ , Chie says, and it sounds smaller than she expects it to.

Miyuki’s eyes soften. She touches Chie’s shoulder, works her way over to the neck. Then she says, I’m here now.

*

It becomes a regular feature: Miyuki waiting outside of Chie’s hotel room after each seminar, Miyuki entering the room and melting into Yukiko, Miyuki going out with Chie for dinner. Miyuki coming back and becoming Yukiko again in the walls of the hotel room. The sex started out almost cruel, but dials down as the days go by. There are bruises on Yukiko’s arms and legs and torso from where Chie’s been too rough, and Chie makes sure to be gentler now, to kiss her way over them and to let Yukiko know that she’s not mad anymore, not nearly as much as before.

Chie has another three days left, so she asks if she can go to Miyuki’s apartment.

Oh, I shouldn’t, says Yukiko, distracted as Chie fingers her hair. I have a roommate, and she’s never been comfortable when I bring back women.

Do you really do that so often?

Every now, she says, and then. Then she confesses, I recently broke up with someone.

Someone?

It turned out that the person I was seeing was actually the head of a company trying to acquire the start-up I'm working for.

Chie doesn’t mention the irony of the duplicity, and tries to not be hurt that she’s something of a stop-gap, a rebound, than who she wants to be to Yukiko-Miyuki.

She can’t stop touching Yukiko’s hair. After a little while longer, she says, I never thought I’d see the day when your hair is shorter than mine.

My hairdresser was thinking about having me dye it, Yukiko says.

Chie looks at the clothes strewn about the room: conservative navy blue and blacks and grays and whites. You’d look nice with red hair.

Do you think so?

You look good in red, she says, and the echo of the past makes everything once again awkward.

*

You’ll have to be quiet about it, says Miyuki on the street. They’re holding hands, their arms linked together at the elbow. My roommate might come back in the middle of the night, and if she hears you screaming your head off—

Don’t worry, says Chie. Everyone from the force thinks I’ve hired a male prostitute.

The apartment doesn’t look much like Yukiko or Miyuki. Chie wonders how much of it is her roommate’s influence, how much of it is styled the way Yukiko thinks Miyuki needs to be. Chie’s a little uneasy, now, because she doesn’t think Miyuki will become Yukiko in the tall, white-walled apartment. And there is that unease in Miyuki, too; but when Miyuki sheds her clothes, she’s wearing a red bra and red underwear, and says things that make Chie terribly confused, saying things that might go into Miyuki’s mouth or Yukiko’s mouth, doing things with Yukiko’s tenderness and Miyuki’s experience.

When they kiss, Chie doesn’t know who she’s kissing or what she’s doing. It must be hard being two people at once, she thinks, and goes to sleep more confused than she was before.

*

You have my address, says Miyuki. And my number.

Right, Chie says. Miyuki is with her on the train platform, wearing a red scarf along with her grey and black dress. She’s holding the business card tight in her hand. You know where I live, she says with a little grin. Just ask where Officer Satonaka is on your next visit to Inaba.

Miyuki’s touch is cool, almost cold, on her arm. When they kiss, Chie knows they won’t see each other for a long, long time. She traces a faint scar on Miyuki’s hairline, a vestige of an accident with a bike in Yukiko’s youth, feels the faint, puckered scars on the back of Miyuki’s neck, a reminder of the TV world.

Don’t forget about me, Chie says, and Yukiko squeezes her hand.

*

Ryuzaki sits next to her on the train.

So, he says, not a bad job, huh? Reuniting with an old flame, connecting—

You moron, she says. The city is escaping into the horizon. There is a lump in her throat. When she can no longer see Chiba, she knows she’s not going to cry, but feels as though she should.


	5. carry me home (ii)

inaba  
april 21, 2021

Chie is the last person in Inaba to know Yukiko is back.

*

_ii. we’ll meet along the way (nothing’s wrong here)_

So, Chie says, her smile reluctant because she’s pretty sure she is, in fact, insane and delusional and just imagining Yukiko sitting at her kitchen table. You’re back.

I’m sorry, says Miyuki, or Yukiko, or whichever one it is. I didn’t know there would be a party. And you were on duty, so—

I know, I know, says Chie, and pours Yukiko wine. Yukiko smiles as she drinks. I’m glad you came to see me, Chie says, and prays her voice isn't nearly as maniacal as she imagines she sounds, because in her ears, she sounds on the wrong side of sane. Yukiko laughs, restrained and calm. Miyuki, Chie thinks, and drowns another shot.

Eight years, says Yukiko softly. Eight years since I’ve been here.

Longer, says Chie.

Yukiko is quiet. She takes Chie’s hand in hers and squeezes.

I never knew, she says, her voice a little strained, how much I missed.

 _You_ left _us_ , says Chie.

Yukiko is quiet. And then she nods, and asks for more wine.

The question that never falls from Chie’s lips is, How long are you staying? She knows better than to ask when she already knows the answer.


	6. hotel fire

chiba  
december 10, 2020

Chie normally doesn’t make a habit out of following strangers home on the subway and having sex with them, but she has to admit that she’s always been kind of stupid when it comes to falling in love.

She can’t put to words what made her follow this woman with medium-ish hair in blue. A reminder of the past, probably. What surprises her most is when the woman turns her head around when she gets off at a stop and smiles at Chie. There’s an unspoken contract made. Chie follows the woman three steps behind, lets her arms swing out casually, and tries to not look too suspicious. The woman gives the doors a little push to let Chie slip through, and takes the stairs up to the eighth floor. She leaves the door open for Chie, and once Chie enters, pulls Chie in and, wordlessly, shuts the door behind her.

*

The woman’s name is Amachi, and Chie barely knows anything about her except there’s something incredibly familiar about her, and that Chie really can’t believe this is happening. She hasn’t even talked with Amachi, just a few glances and looks and then she’s, abruptly, head-over-heels in lust with this person she’s never even met and sleeping with the woman in an apartment she’s never entered before.

She notices all sorts of things that are probably completely irrelevant: that Amachi speaks with the slightest of city accents, one she doesn’t bother to disguise because it sounds normal to her; that Amachi has writing calluses, and a scar on her hairline that dips slightly. An accident with a bike, she says later, when they’re sitting on opposite sides of the bed, Chie with her legs crossed and facing Amachi, Amachi with her back turned and legs dangling off the edge of the bed.

There is a funny sense of guardedness with Amachi, one that Chie doesn’t feel with herself. Chie feels like she can tell Amachi many things, that she’s a police officer, that she’s from Inaba, that she wants to see Amachi again. All Amachi will tell her are things about her body: explanations of the many small, peculiar scars on her body (“Acid burn,” she says, when Chie traces a small burn on her neck, a smaller version of the ones Chie has on her arms and legs from the TV), little, smiling confessions of the effort she goes through to look good. She tells Chie that she has her hair cut like this because the hairdresser’s hand slipped, and they spent nearly half an hour working it into something more manageable.

Will I see you again? Chie asks.

A hesitation. Amachi says, Maybe, and asks where Chie is staying in the city.

*

The next day, Ryuzaki’s trying to set her up with someone. She brushes him off. She’s waiting for a woman she’s met only yesterday to call her, which might be an impossibility, but either way she’s not up for anything resembling a date except for a second one. She is, very suddenly, hungry: hungry to know Amachi better, hungry to see her again, hungry for reasons she cannot explain. She's hungry in a way that goes beyond lust, or maybe it doesn't. Either way, she’s completely infatuated, so deeply and so thoroughly that she’s not even afraid of it. When Amachi comes to see her, she’s wearing makeup and looks like she just got off of work. Amachi, Chie realizes, is good looking, good looking and so put together that it looks almost as though looking good is part of her job.

Hi, Chie says. She’s wearing sweats. She doesn’t feel out of place at all, even as she takes Amachi by the wrist and leads her in.

I, says Amachi, a little tremor hidden beneath the silky smooth tone in her voice, wanted to see you again. Very—

Chie kisses her.

Very, Amachi says, her eyes bright, much.

*

Amachi says her life isn’t very interesting. Chie winds up speaking a lot about her life as a police officer and her life in Inaba. That seems to be what interests Amachi the most: childhood and adolescence, stories of Chie’s dog and her high school and the people there. Chie thinks it’s really quite boring, but to someone like Amachi, it must be fascinating. Amachi looks like one of those people who Chie will normally get excited to meet (Amachi's an _accountant_ , how boring can you get?), but Chie doesn’t feel guarded around her at all. Barely feels anything except a dopey kind of stupidity that makes everyone ask her if she’s really all right.

Chie could get drunk on Amachi’s voice, so maybe it’s best that she does most of the talking.

*

Amachi visits Chie eight more times. Then, one night, she says, in a voice that sounds too familiar, is everything Chie’s ever wanted to hear: _Chie_.

Amachi’s lipstick is smeared across Chie’s cheek and Amachi’s chin. Chie doesn’t know what to do. The clouds have fallen before her feet, and deposited her in some new, strange world where she’s slept with her MIA best friend. Not only slept with her best friend, but loved her more than she had ever loved or wanted anyone else. The thought makes her stomach jolt and unsettle, and in her mind something is crumbling.

She looks into Amachi’s eyes and says, Yukiko?

*

Chie spends the rest of the stay in Chiba searching for Yukiko. It’s no use. She rides on the subway and desperately tries to remember which way she turned and which stop she got off at, but she can’t. She wants to say, fuck Yukiko and the horse she rides on!, but that strange, crumbling thing is blowing dust into her eyes and she can’t think or see clearly enough to really process it: that Yukiko is in Chiba, that Yukiko is alive, that she saw Yukiko and didn’t even recognize her.

That’s what hurts most, more than anything else. Maybe she’s always feared this: seeing and meeting and befriending Yukiko without ever knowing that it was her. Did Yukiko know? Probably. Chie can’t imagine Yukiko not knowing. So has she been led on, or were they both deceived?

Chie doesn’t know anymore. She wants Yukiko back. She wants those eight years with Yukiko back. She’s a police officer now, satisfied with her job and happy with the people she sees, maybe even a little glad Yukiko left, but that was before she met Yukiko again and before she realized how much she had missed. Eight years. A year of high school, four years of college, three years of gods knew what. All she can think about now is how beautiful Yukiko looks and always looked, how much and how little she’s changed. She wonders if Yukiko is out there thinking the same things about her, or if she’s really gone, never to return.

When it’s time to leave the city, Ryuzaki leans in and tells her that she looks like a complete wreck, what a number that chick did on her. Chie nods, too dazed to really process anything more than a heat inside her that's probably, kind of sort of maybe, love.


	7. carry me home (iii)

inaba  
april 21, 2021

Chie is the last person in Inaba to know Yukiko is back.

*

_iii. hotel fire (what a poisoned man comes to know)_

Chie is the last person in Inaba to know Yukiko is back, and is probably the last person to see her. She doesn’t mind. She’s needed time to prepare. See, when she first heard Yukiko was back, she didn’t know what she wanted: whether she wanted to treat Yukiko coldly, to feign amnesia, or to be kind and push Yukiko into the nearest futon. By the time she makes way to the Amagi Inn, she knows what she wants to say, knows what she wants to do, and thinks she knows what _she_ wants.

She’s stupid: stupid for falling in love, stupid for loving, stupid for going back. When Yukiko comes out to greet her, all of Chie’s plans and words fall to dust in her head. What she wants is finally within her reach, but she's too afraid to take it.


	8. Drench me in loneliness

It’s cold in here, Yukiko says.

Isn’t it always, Chie thinks, but does not say. It's dark. It's past midnight. Chie has to go to work tomorrow, but she can't bring herself to sleep. Not now, when there are questions jittering about in the back of her mind, and the taste of Yukiko still warm on her tongue.

So, Chie asks for maybe the fifth time that night, what did you miss most about Inaba?

Yukiko says nothing at first. She looks out into the moon, and says the same thing she said the last time Chie asked the question. You.

Chie doesn't know whether it is a lie, a truth, or both.

You’re home now, Chie says, and watches Yukiko carefully. The hairs on the back of Yukiko's neck rise, rise, rise up.

Yes, says Yukiko. Yes, I am.


End file.
